


all it takes is for the dark to shine

by feralphoenix



Category: Uncommon Time (Video Game)
Genre: Additional Warnings In Author's Note, Mild Sexual Content, Missing Scene, Other, Spoilers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-08-21
Updated: 2015-12-22
Packaged: 2018-04-16 06:45:16
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 10,757
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4615263
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/feralphoenix/pseuds/feralphoenix
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>So many of your memories of Alto, now you think of it, are of chasing after that back. She’s shorter than you, but her shoulders seem so steady and broad, like she’s waiting expectantly for someone to hand over the world so she can balance it there. She carries herself like someone so much bigger, it’s always a shock when you stand beside her and realize the gap between the height of your shoulder and hers.</i>
</p><p>In which recent events cause Alto and Aubrey to reevaluate their relationship. Set from after the first extra dungeon to after the second.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. don't cry, star child

**Author's Note:**

> _(the dark level of not knowing_ – i tried to disguise the emotions i spilled with a fortissimo voice)
> 
>    
> posts... canon side-stories for [own game](http://dialoguelostloop.tumblr.com/uncommontime) on ao3... because why not i guess...
> 
> this was originally written as a gift for one of my testers! beware of canon-typical discussion of abuse, toxic/manipulative relationships and the inherent consent issues involved, codependency, rape and rape culture, eugenics, etc.

You are foolish or optimistic enough to convince yourself that everything is and will continue to be fine until you lean in and Alto turns away from your kiss. At first it baffles you as to what could be wrong, but then you see past the way her hair falls into her face in the dim light to the fact that her eyes are narrowed and she’s not looking at you. Her hands are clenched into fists, scars rippling over the thin bones.

Through the haze of arousal your brain registers that it would be a very bad idea to try to turn her face back around, so you just stand there in a stupor with your hand over her breast. The nipple is stiff against your palm and this is horrendously distracting. You feel like a game animal that’s just spotted a hunter, suspended in that moment before the flight instinct kicks in and desperate not to make any wrong moves.

Alto closes her eyes and breathes out. When her eyelids raise again she doesn’t look at you, but she grasps your wrist and firmly removes your hand from her chest. Her palm is warm against your skin. One would perhaps not expect it of her at first glance—she’s too heavy for the muscle to actually show on her frame the way it does with Teagan—but she is powerful enough to crush your bones if she really wanted to, and the restraint of her grip awes you like it always does.

She steps away and releases your wrist.

“I don’t want to tonight,” she says, and her voice is so calm you can’t pick out what she’s feeling. “Let’s just go to sleep.”

It occurs to you for a split second to be annoyed: You _do_ want to tonight, you’ve been looking forward to it all day—the vague comfort and reassurance you only really get from touching her, being able to escape your worries by focusing all your higher brain function on the intricacies of the sex. Then Alto has turned her back to you and you’re watching her roll her shoulders and the soft fold of her spine as she walks away.

She lies down in bed on her side and pulls the covers up to her shoulder. She does not look at you once the whole time.

Because you don’t know what else to do you turn off the lights and lay down beside her. There’s no way to tell if she’s awake or asleep and you’re afraid to sit up and check, afraid of what she might say if she’s not sleeping and sees you.

Too frustrated to calm down, too ashamed and too shy to masturbate, and too nervous not to obsess, you lay in bed frozen on your side and don’t look at Alto. You wake in the morning amazed you fell asleep at all and with no memory of it. The other side of the bed is empty, sheets rumpled from Alto’s presence but cold.

 

 

There is too much going on in your head— _too damn much_ as Alto and maybe Teagan would put it. A lot of it’s all tied up in your father and Chantal and things that it is much too late to try to fix.

This—whatever it is with Alto ought to seem perfectly easy to handle in comparison, but ever since the night she refused you she’s been avoiding you so neatly it almost looks like a coincidence. She makes herself busy with practice and talking to Saki and doing errands with Meirin and her smile never slips: If not for how she never comes to your room at night anymore and the locked door to her own bedroom, even you might have been fooled.

There’s no one quite like Alto when it comes to pretending that everything is perfectly alright when it isn’t; she is matchless. The wrongness roils inside you, nights lonely and wretched, but the guilt at pushing Alto back onto this well-worn rut is what breaks you down.

Alto is your rock in the storm; she is still the center of your universe. Understanding why, finally understanding that things mustn’t stay that way forever can’t change the status quo so quickly. She’s everything to you, and after the past month you thought you would be able to look at her and Know what the right thing to say is. (There is still so much of your idea of love and romance that is built, begrudgingly, atop what your father had with Lady Arietta; you may not want to admit what your ideal model is but it’s written too deeply into you to change.)

But you watch the line of her shoulders for any hint or sign of tension from across the dining room and you remember that you had blithely assumed Alto to be her full name until she introduced herself as _Contralto Cantabile_ with her utmost formality to the prime minister. There is so much of Alto that is still unknowable to you; she never needed the white mask of malice because she’s already learned to make a perfect mask of her face. This is not a source of fear for you, but of despair, and of shame.

You are what you’ve twisted yourself into. Alto is trying to untwist herself, but you are sure that the wounds run deeper than she will ever let anyone see.

 

 

Anyway, you last for about three days trying to think of something you can do, and then you give up and go to Meirin.

The others are all out doing their own errands and she’s in the kitchen peeling apples to make pie. As soon as you tell her that if it’s not too much of a bother you’d like her advice, she pulls out a chair and hands you the other peeler.

You look at your hands while you talk—both because you’re too embarrassed to look somebody in the face and talk about sex at the same time and because it’s harder to get the skin off these things than it looks like. Not so Meirin: She listens to you quietly, and you can tell through the curtain of your bangs that her eyes are on your face. She doesn’t stop peeling all the time. The red skins all seem to come off the apples in one long effortless coil.

“Hm,” she says after you’ve been done talking for a few minutes. “I think it’d probably be better to actually try talking to her first. It’s not like I’m going to know all the secret Alto passwords just because we’re both girls.”

You raise your head and give her a long lidded stare. “With all due respect, Alto is making it very difficult for me to get her alone so that we can talk. I wouldn’t be involving you otherwise.”

She shrugs, like, _fair enough,_ and sets her fifth apple on the table. You have barely started peeling your second.

“Hm, I don’t know… how has it been, then? Before the awkward started?” She wipes both hands on her skirt and leans towards the table, resting the side of her face along one palm.

You look at her. “What do you mean, ‘how has it been’?”

“Like, I dunno, has it been good?”

You blush badly, hate that your pale skin makes it so obvious, and think a lot of mean and uncharitable things about Meirin’s ability to ask a question like that with a completely straight face. “I—”

“Seriously, though.” She points the peeler at you. “Has Alto been enjoying herself, have _you_ been enjoying yourself, has anything really awkward happened before, I dunno. Have you guys had to have Talks about what is and isn’t okay, have lines been crossed, whatever—it’d help to have as much information as you’re okay with telling me, if I’m supposed to be giving good advice.”

You look pointedly away; Meirin keeps watching you expectantly. “There are—things that Alto doesn’t want to do, that she told me, and I’ve never tried to push her into them if that’s what you mean. I would never.”

When you glance back Meirin is nodding studiously at you. “And this is the first time she’s been like, I’m not in the mood?”

It is too hard to hold her gaze, so you go back to peeling the apple. “It’s the first time she’s changed her mind in the middle of—things,” you mumble. “And she’s never avoided me like this before. You know she’s locking her door at night now.”

“It worries me that you know she does that,” says Meirin.

“I don’t—I wanted to _talk,_ that’s _it,”_ you protest, and nearly drop the apple.

“Still kinda creepy, though,” she says. “Like, what, do you check every night to see if she left it unlocked this time, or—”

_“No,”_ you say. You’re probably bright pink straight to the tips of your ears.

“Okay,” Meirin says like she doesn’t believe you. If you had worse self-control you just might be throwing your apple at her right now, but then again you probably wouldn’t have the guts for that anyway.

She’s quiet long enough for you to finish clumsily peeling the apple you’re on, then pick up another one and fumble with it for about a minute.

“Well, I can’t really speak for Alto,” she says in the end. “But I can speak for me, and we’re both nobles, so. We’ve complained at each other enough for me to know that we’ve had to deal with some of the same things growing up.”

“What does that have to do with anything,” you say, gracing her with a look up only to have her roll her eyes at you.

“I’m _getting_ there,” Meirin tells you, sounding approximately as exasperated as you are already feeling. “Like… I dunno. Your parents both did sex work and stuff, right?”

“I was a _child,”_ you protest. “They were not the kind of parents who would talk about their jobs to someone who hadn’t even hit puberty.”

“That’s not really where I was going with that, but I’m glad anyway,” Meirin says, rolling her eyes at you again. You drop your gaze to the half-peeled apple in your hands. “What I mean is like… you guys weren’t all that rich, right? So did your parents have any expectations that you go into the family business, or whatever, or do anything specific with your future?”

“Not… that I’m aware of, no,” you reply. “It is kind of strange to hear sex work called a ‘family business’. We didn’t have any other close relatives that I knew about, I don’t know if my grandparents worked in the red light district too. But part of the reason my parents worked so hard was to try to make sure that I could make my own choices about my future. If we stayed poor forever, there would only have been so many options available for me.”

This time when you chance a look up, Meirin’s nodding with a more serious look on her face, arms folded.

“It’s not like that when you’re noble,” she says. “Especially not when you’re a girl born into a noble family. It’s probably a little different from country to country, but for Alto and me it was the same gross story. It sounds like Alto had it worse than me, even.” And she makes a face. “Because nobility’s overly concerned with bloodlines. If you’re a noble kid, then you’re somewhere between a bargaining chip and livestock. Your marriage prospects are up to your parents, who always want to use you to make ties with other noble families—building alliances, or as peace offerings to enemies. Or in Alto’s case—”

“She told me,” you interrupt, and fold both hands over the apple for something to do with them. “Her parents wouldn’t acknowledge a relationship with anyone who couldn’t—couldn’t impregnate her with a child capable of carrying on the Cantabile magic.”

It sounds ugly when you put it like that, but it _is_ ugly. You still remember Alto’s expression when she first talked about it, before your first time together: Her eyes narrowed, staring into the space over your shoulder.

“Yeah,” Meirin says. “Her family has a lot of really gross eugenics BS tied up in it too. But what all that means is that like—anyone who’s capable of getting pregnant is really, really strictly forbidden from having sex. Because how else is your spouse going to be able to trust that any kids you eventually have are _really theirs?_ It’s stupid,” and you notice that she’s raised her voice a little. “It’s _really_ stupid. But that’s the culture we grew up in. We’re not virgins, ergo, we’re damaged goods. Even if you’ve done everything you can to undo that kind of shitty brainwashing, growing up in that kind of super-controlling atmosphere messes you up.

“Like, I had people helping undo all that damage for years, and I’ve done a lot to like… try to take my body back as something that belongs to me, you know? But the second I start feeling unsafe or like things are not on my own terms, just, nope. Whole oceans full of nope, there is not enough nope in the world.” She holds up her hands, spreading them demonstratively as if to try to quantify her sheer levels of, as she puts it, ‘nope’.

You unfold your hands. There are still a bunch of little stripes of red skin on the apple that you have missed. You feel like you are bad at everything, which is equal parts a source of frustration and of despair.

“Basically…” Meirin trails off. And then, at length: “Alto’s a lot more messed-up than I am. I wouldn’t be surprised if she’s still kinda got issues about this too. So if anything… I mean anything, not even like, actually sex-related… happened between you guys that made her feel not safe, yeah, I can see her getting weird about that.”

You have a sinking feeling that you know where this is going. “What am I supposed to _do_ about it, though.”

Meirin shrugs disgustedly at you as if you have deeply and irrevocably missed the point. “Talk to her! Like… if she wants space, give her space, but communication’s important. If you think you might’ve done something wrong and don’t know what, like, ask her about it. And don’t be a jerk. Everybody feeling safe is way more important than getting off.”

“I think we’ve already established that she doesn’t _want_ to talk to me,” you say, maybe a little more sourly than you intend.

“Give her _space,”_ Meirin says to you. Slowly, as if you are three years old. “If she’s still avoiding you after a couple days, she may just be doubting that all you want to do is talk, or doesn’t think you’d listen anyway.”

“I’m not Teagan,” you protest.

“It’s still what she’s used to,” Meirin says. “Anyway, if that’s the case, I can tell her that you want to try talking things out. Like, I make no guarantees. Just don’t be a jackass about it and things will probably be fine. And seriously stop checking her door every night.”

“I told you, I don’t,” you say, cross. She ignores you.

“Finish peeling that,” she says instead. “Also, if you want to stick around and help me bake, that’d be cool too.”

“Maybe,” you answer. You have never really liked cooking, but it isn’t as though you have anything better to do, and three days of having been avoided mean that you are pretty lonely. Even so, you don’t want to give her the satisfaction of agreeing right away.

 

 

She’s in the practice room.

Meirin all but kicked your door down to let you know she’d convinced Alto to wait up for you, but you would have known anyway as soon as you left your room. The sound of her cello echoes up the staircase, clear and loud. The door to the practice room must be open. It’s not something anyone would think to comment on; after deciding to postpone the performance until after you’ve been able to go and talk to Lady Arietta, on top of joint practice sessions it’s been common for people to play at all times. Everyone’s so used to the piece and to the noise that they just ignore it.

You tiptoe downstairs in your nightgown, peek around the doorframe, and there she is: Hair down and in pajamas, swaying lightly in her chair with the movement of the bow. She’s playing louder, and at a slightly faster tempo, than you all actually decided on, but her expression is blank and her hands and breath are steady. You can almost hear the echo of the others in the background.

If things were less awkward you’d just join in without thinking anything of it—at least you hope you would, but you don’t trust your voice without doing warm-ups first and so you sit down at the piano instead. The master sheet music’s already set there—maybe she was practicing with somebody else before?—so you sit. Behind you Alto’s changing the tempo again, not giving you time to think and decide, so you go with Saki’s part on your left hand and Meirin’s on your right.

Keeping up with her is hell. You’ve got to keep checking over your shoulder every time there’s a lull in either of your parts, because she yaws the pace like a storm. The one time she opens her eyes it isn’t to signal you, but to fix you with a burning look that sends chills skating up the length of your spine. She’s doing it on purpose. You don’t know if it’s to shake you off or to dare you to keep up, but this isn’t Alto the ensemble leader, patient and steadier than a metronome. You imagine that if she were a soloist onstage, leading an accompanist or an orchestra in concert, this is how she would play.

Your right hand slips—you can’t handle the grace notes—and you nearly give up and switch to your part, but Alto won’t let you. She forges on ahead, willful, tempestuous, cello strings squeaking under the force of her hands, and you don’t know how anyone could ever mistake her calm façade for real obedience.

Her hands drop from halfway up the fingerboard down to third position, the bass humming in your sternum, awkward against the very physical ache in your chest. You shift your feet along the piano pedals, straining against the instinct to mimic how your father might have played, and instead of keeping the last note as written, a string down for the vibrato, she shocks you by playing it open string instead, a low pure pitch that pierces as it rings.

You’re out of breath, but so is she. Alto holds her bow up until the note dies away, and her hand is shaking. She doesn’t turn to face you, and you swallow, unsure of what to say.

She puts her bow down across the bench of her stand, and lifts the cello onto her lap, pulling the end pin in. You watch her put her instrument away: The swing of her hair as she leans over to zip it into its case, the movements that pull her skin white in between her vivid scars.

At last she sits up. She still doesn’t turn to face you, but:

“Let’s go outside.”

And before you can even protest that it’s night, that it’s going to be cold, up she gets. You nearly tangle your legs in the piano bench trying to follow her.

So many of your memories of Alto, now you think of it, are of chasing after that back. She’s shorter than you, but her shoulders seem so steady and broad, like she’s waiting expectantly for someone to hand over the world so she can balance it there. She carries herself like someone so much bigger, it’s always a shock when you stand beside her and realize the gap between the height of your shoulder and hers.

 

 

It is cold out. The house lights and the distant street lights in the city square provide some vague illumination, but they’re not really a match for the moon and stars. When she’s facing forward it’s too dark for you to see her face, but she turns her head up towards the snow and moonlight gilds her profile, cords standing out along her throat.

You require exactly as long as it takes to make things awkward to realize that she’s waiting for you to talk, meaning that you are already off-balance and panicked when you start scrabbling for the right words. And Alto is silent. This is already not a good sign: Inarticulate as she might be, if she had reassurances for you she wouldn’t withhold them.

“I’m sorry,” is what you say, at last.

She doesn’t turn around. Cruelly, she still seems to be waiting for you to finish. She doesn’t even ask you why or what for. You are in trouble.

“It’s—it’s something I’ve done that made you feel uncomfortable, isn’t it? That made you feel—not safe. So I’m sorry. But I—I’m not good at this, so I don’t know for sure what it is I did. I don’t want to keep hurting you, so please, talk to me. I really do want to change, but I’m not sure what to do. This is just, it’s really awkward, I want to know if you just need space or if it’s—” You struggle to find the right words, look at your hands, and clench them on your nightgown for lack of anything else to do with them. You shiver and then sigh, your breath white on the wind. You want to go back inside already.

Alto takes a step forward, then another. Her breath rises, and you wonder if you’re imagining the tension in the line of her shoulders. Her loose hair wavers and obscures them.

Then she turns to face you, and it’s all you can do not to jump back. Her eyes have gone pale, the way they sometimes do when she’s very angry.

“I don’t like being used,” she says finally. Her voice is very calm and steady, but there are sparks hidden in the coals, and you can hear them clearly.

“Oh,” is all you can say, and you feel the heat rise in your face. You really should have known that this is what it is. But you’re a fool, so you hoped.

“So I want to be by myself for a while,” Alto goes on. “That’s all.”

“Okay,” you say at length. It feels inadequate as anything. Her eyes are too hard to look at, so you let your gaze fall to her hands, but the tremor in her fingers feels accusatory and so you settle for her bare feet. There is a film of snow on the cobblestones, but she’s not even shivering. Alto likes the cold, you think.

She shifts her weight while you watch, and walks past you with silent footsteps. The light brightens against her shins as the door creaks open behind you, and then she disappears from your view. You flinch at the sound of the door closing.

Helpless, you raise your head. The stars are as distant as they are bright. They offer no solace, no advice; only the cold reality of how small and alone and foolish you really are. How that’s no one’s fault but your own.

A snowflake lands on your eyelid. You shake your head, wrap your arms around yourself and shiver.

Admitting defeat, you turn and clasp the doorknob. None of the warmth of Alto’s hand lingers here. You don’t have any illusions to cling to here. At the very least—you want to believe that that’s for the best.


	2. as if to blow away this misery

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>  _(even though your heart is breaking_ – the fact of the matter is you need to get your [heart](http://starseas.tumblr.com/post/120143299778) back)

This was a bad idea.

It’s easy to distract yourself during the daytime, when there’s friends to talk to, but at night you curl up around yourself and hold the pendant against your chest until it leaves marks. You love the cold, love the faint light of the embers in the hearth, the heavy blankets that keep you safe and secure, but you long for the sound of rain and the way it always turned your thoughts into white noise.

You miss being held. You weren’t ever aware of how horrible it is not to be touched before; people didn’t touch you at all before, except to hurt you. It’s just another new thing you’ve learned about yourself over the course of this journey: That quiet acknowledgement, the _here I am and so are you._

And you miss Aubrey’s hands. The way they always felt pleasantly cool. The way their fingers could only ever stay still against your skin. The slowness, the hesitance, the care.

You miss having that white shadow at your shoulder, the conversations that were always so easy, their quiet laugh and their smile.

Missing them makes you want to throw up.

Even when you’re burning, even when you’re aching, the thought of actually going over to the next room is like falling through the ice of a frigid lake. They don’t want you, they _never_ wanted you; to them you are just a tool. The same way you are to everyone.

Well. Not to _everyone._ But nearly. Enough that the thought still makes the blood roar in your ears the way it did that night, panic so immediate that you just blurted out _not tonight_ before you could even second-guess yourself.

It pounds in your head like a fever. Loneliness, panic, loneliness, panic. You clench your hands around the pendant until the tendons in your wrists twang and your knuckles crack in protest, fingertips going numb.

You think of how Aubrey looked when you told them how you felt, wide-eyed, blanched against the cold; regret and irritation and bitterness stab up through your sternum.

This was a bad idea.

 

 

“I hate this,” you announce, slumped over the long dining table, eyes aching from lack of sleep. “I hate this, I hate this.”

Quiet (relative), and then there is a clink close to your head. You open your eyes. Saki’s hand is still half curled around the cup and saucer. The pose is elegant, but his hand is very close to your face, so you can see the brittle underneath the soft. He’s like an open nerve that everyone pretends not to see. Same as you. Or, at least, as you once were.

But you don’t like living like that anymore; you’ve got something fierce and icy in your chest, something with teeth, something called a heart. You don’t want to avoid being looked at anymore. In fact, if anyone tries, you are quite sure you will howl.

The only ones here, though, are Saki and Teagan. That’s not a thing you have to worry about (definitely not for the former, probably not for the latter).

Even as you’re thinking about that, Teagan crosses her arms and sort of half squints at you. “Alto, you look like shit.”

You sit up for long enough to drink the coffee Saki brought you and thank him for it, then slump right back down. “Well, I hate this,” you say pointedly. “I hate being alone at night.”

From the corner of your eye you can see Teagan close her eyes and sort of reel back in disgust. She does not, to her credit, immediately turn around and walk out the door.

Saki makes a sympathetic noise from beside you. “We’ll listen, if you’d like to have someone to talk to about it. We _will_ listen,” and this with a warning tone, his eyes flicking away from you.

“I’ll listen as long as I’m not getting graphic detail,” says Teagan, ever the martyr.

You half sit up, sort of clench your hands on thin air, relax them when your wrists protest. “I—I miss being with Aubrey but like… I can’t do it, I don’t… it doesn’t feel safe anymore. I told them back then that the fact we were there for each other when we needed each other isn’t gonna change, and it _won’t,_ I just…”

“That new context isn’t going away?” Saki supplies.

“Yeah.” He is so much better than you at words. “Like. The first time was, it was a relief, like I’d had all these bad expectations and worries and then it wasn’t like that at _all,_ I got to have a good experience with somebody I like who actually treated me like a person instead of like a thing. I mean it was just, really, so much rough stuff had just happened and then they said they liked me and that they’d stay with me even if the people at home tried to get in the way and… It was just such a relief, for me and for them too I think.”

“And then you got carried away, yeah, I don’t need to hear the rest,” says Teagan.

“No, it was…” You gesture again, searching. “I mean yeah it was kinda impulsive, but I think saying it like that’s kind of a disservice. We chose it. We talked each other through stuff when we needed to. It was nice.”

You look up at them, gauge their reaction with a little bereft hope that you managed to get your meaning across. Teagan’s sort of shuddering like she just ate something that tasted nasty. Saki, though, has raised a hand to his mouth, a smile bending his cheeks.

This is, actually, the first time you’ve referred to yourself and Aubrey as _we_ since the two of you went through their memories together. What an odd thing to notice.

“But it… hm. It mattered that it was me,” you finish. “They made it feel like it mattered that it was me.”

“I definitely understand that,” Saki says, pulling absentmindedly at one of his curls. Something about the way he looks at you makes you feel like he really does.

“They were using me, though,” you say, and bite your lip against the sense memory of Aubrey’s mouth on yours. “Like my family used me. Like Teagan used me. Like—whoever my parents would’ve picked to marry me would’ve used me.”

It could’ve been anyone. If someone else unattached had woken Aubrey up, they’d’ve latched onto that person just the same, made that person feel just as appreciated and loved and cherished and safe and needed. All they wanted was to hollow out a space in a heart, any heart, so that they could shut themself up there. Your only real significance was as a warm body to fuck.

Teagan is saying something but her voice is a long way away. A cold hand on your shoulder makes you jump. Saki is in the chair beside you. Teagan’s across the table from you, both hands flat on the wood surface, eyes narrowed and mouth a hard line.

Your arms are tight around your knees; the table digs into them, your thighs are crushing your breasts. You are dizzy. You close your eyes, take a deep breath, uncurl yourself very deliberately.

There is such a short jump between what Aubrey was using you for and having your worth reduced to a womb to grow a fetus in. To just one more cog in some great, perpetually-moving machine.

“This is really fucking you up,” Teagan says. She’s angry. Worried. “I haven’t caught you rocking in years.”

You don’t think you’ve heard her talk like this without the undertone of accusation and disgust for about as long, but you don’t say it. She told Saki what to do to ground you because she knew better than to touch you herself, that she doesn’t have that right anymore. You don’t need to reward her for that by biting her.

“I loved them,” you say, and correct yourself: “I love them. I thought they loved me. They made me feel safe, I was okay with it because it was them, but they weren’t safe.”

“It’s all right to feel betrayed,” Saki says, low. “It’s normal.”

“But I _miss_ them,” you say, and smack the table lightly. Your coffee cup rattles. “I miss feeling safe but I also miss them. I miss going out on stupid dates and making music together and getting them to make cute faces and, I just…” Without words, you shake your head. “I want to forgive them and I _can’t,_ at least not yet.”

Teagan makes a face at the last bit, but she bites her tongue.

“Whenever you’re ready to talk to them again,” Saki tells you, “just let me or Meirin or Teagan know and we can help arrange something with them.”

“Yeah,” you say, and take another deep breath. “Thanks.”

Teagan shrugs. “Saki can probably take this from here, so I’m leaving before you start going on about any other gross mushy crap.”

“Go on then,” you say, and she spreads her hands with exaggerated disgust at your benediction. “Nobody’s keeping you here.”

She sees herself out. It’s quiet aside from the distant ticking of the wall clock in the corner.

“Is there anything,” Saki says, “else that’s hard about taking a break with Aubrey?”

You touch your chest, spread your fingers wide over your breastbone. “I—I mean I miss the sex, I do, but. It’s hard just having been close to somebody all the time and then not touching anyone at all.”

Saki seems to consider this. He lifts up the chair he sits on, and sets it down fastidiously close to yours.

“You could’ve scooted it,” you say, a little amused despite the situation.

“It’s not very good for the chair or the rug when you do that,” he says, almost like he’s ashamed of it. You think about it and nod.

He sets a hand on your shoulder; when you don’t reject it, he slides it over your back to the opposite shoulder. He leans in so that your temple rests to the side of his face, his hair and the lace of his veil tickling your forehead.

“Is this all right?” he asks.

“Meirin will get jealous,” you protest.

“She won’t,” he says, placid.

“Okay,” you say. “Then it’s fine.”

You close your eyes. It’s not the same as with Aubrey, but that’s a good thing. You want a surrogate only, not a replacement. People are not—should not be—interchangeable.

And besides, Saki is too thin. Pressed up against his side, you can feel his ribs even through his layers, the bones beneath his sleeves. You’re sitting still, but his pulse is stilted, erratic. It’s not as frantic as when you carried him down the mountain, but it reminds you soberingly of a wounded hind you saw one winter in your childhood; the way it flinched and staggered through the snow, almost seeming a different creature than the leaping deer you were familiar with. You could snap him in two like a dry twig, if you wanted to; it’s scary.

These are the things you want to protect, this fragile human being made of collapsing tinder, exposing his weakness to you even as he comforts you. It grounds you with the same sharp efficacy of the physical contact: You’d hesitate to lift your sword for all of humanity, but you would bring it down in a second for the sake of your friends. With all your malice, with all your care, you remind yourself that these are the people you would kill for.

“This sucks,” you say into the bony shoulder. “It really, really sucks. And I still feel like I’m being the bad guy here.”

“You are not,” Saki tells you, sensible. “It’s your body. You’re more than entitled to withhold sex for whatever reasons you like. Aubrey’s issues are quite a different matter. What’s important in these specific circumstances is your comfort level.”

“Yeah. I know that in my head and all… I’m just not used to being allowed to think of things that way, I guess.”

“Well, you most certainly are now. Finish your coffee, dear,” he says lightly, and steps away. “It’s going to get cold.”

 

 

Meirin’s already reassured you that you don’t need to get a different room from her, that she’s not shy about these things, and you’re privately kind of glad. You want someone to look for cues from.

“Watch me first,” she says, and then matter of factly takes off her jumper, her armwarmers, her shirt and long lace-up boots and leggings.

“I don’t have to take off my clothes too, do I?” you ask, maybe a little bit alarmed.

Meirin shrugs. “You don’t _have_ to. Might want to take some of ‘em off though, if you think they’ll get in the way.” And she pulls her hair loose, retying it into low pigtails that hang forward over her shoulders. You kind of admire how unselfconscious she is, just standing around in her underwear, and you watching her with the escort warming up her wrists with little exercises on the other side of the room.

“Now, you’re here for massages only,” she says.

Meirin nods. “If I were here for anything else Saki’d sulk that I was partying without him. He still needs rest before we get up to anything too adventurous.”

The escort makes a noise of understanding and pats the bed. Meirin gets up on it and stretches out on her front.

“Do you two want any surprises?” she asks, casually. You tilt your head—what does that even mean, are they talking in code?—and, catching your reaction, the escort smiles, dark eyes crinkling at the corners. “I’m guessing that’s a no.”

“Not for Alto,” Meirin asserts from the pillow. “But I wouldn’t mind one.”

The escort laughs; whatever’s passing between them, you’re way out of the loop. You don’t know where you’re supposed to go or what to do; you’ve been standing awkwardly still all this time.

“You have nothing to worry about,” the escort tells you. “We’re very professional here. I’ll check in with you repeatedly to make sure you’re having a good time, and I won’t do anything you don’t want me to.”

Meirin, who has cracked her eyes open just a bit to watch you, says, “If you don’t want to sit on the bed with me, go grab a chair or something. Dunno if you actually want to stand up the whole time.”

Coming down to Polyphony was her idea. You mentioned being in tactile withdrawal (Saki’s wording, not yours) to her while the two of you were hanging up laundry, and she said that Saki had brought it up to her too, which you probably should have expected from the beginning.

“I dunno if it actually _will_ help,” she’d told you after proposing you go to the red light district and get massages together, “but this way at least you’ll get to have someone nice work the kinks out of your shoulders or whatever. It might even give you perspective.”

She hadn’t been able to explain beyond that, and you’re not in a position where you can fault her for it. You were—are still—kind of wary, but curiosity’s been eating at you since the first time you passed through Polyphony, dammit. You told her you’d give it a try.

So you grab a chair, sit on it with your hands in your lap. The escort has come out with a tall thin bottle: She pours onto her free palm something clear and gel-like that smells so strongly of flowers that you can pick it up as far away as you’re sitting. You’re staring. She catches you at it and laughs—not in a cruel way, but sort of fond, like all the probably-wrong ideas you’re getting are the nicest thing she’s run across all day.

“It’s just massage lotion,” she says, and actually passes the bottle to you to look at. “This is not the kind that can double as lube, by the way, it doesn’t play nice with condoms and some people react badly to it being applied to sensitive areas.”

“Oh,” you say, and look for a place to put it down, settling for the edge of the mattress. Meirin does not even bat an eyelid. She’s still stretched out on her front, perfectly calm, like she’s been through this a billion times before and it’s routine. It’s amazing to you—you can’t really even imagine. You know she started out with the same kinds of issues as you, what with her social status, and yet here she is, so completely confident in her own skin, brazen, vulnerable. Like lifting your chin and baring your throat as a dare to the world, secure in the knowledge of your own safety.

How could you be shown this and not admire her? You can’t imagine being able to do the same.

You decide that you’d better distract yourself before you get too jealous, and watch the escort’s hands instead, spreading the lotion over and over her pale palms.

“Where do you want to start?” she asks Meirin. “Shoulders first?”

“Yes, please,” Meirin says, and arches her upper back a little.

The escort’s on the other side of the bed, so you have a clear view of everything. It’s mesmerizing. You were expecting… you don’t know, briskness, practicality. Businesslike movements. This is something she’s being paid to do, after all. When she said she was “professional”, you sort of expected to see detachment.

But when she presses her fingers into Meirin’s skin, probing and rubbing, it’s very careful. She asks Meirin if the lotion feels all right on her bare skin, asks if she’s pressing too hard or not hard enough, asks where Meirin would like her to pay attention to next.

“You have a knot,” she announces, looking more at how Meirin’s shoulders have gone tense than where her fingers are actually poking. “Do you want me to get it?”

“Yeah, go for it. I’m going to swear,” Meirin warns. “But don’t stop unless I actually ask you to, okay?”

“Got it,” the escort says, and gets to work.

Meirin does swear (“Ow, ow, fucking _shit,_ ow, fuck!”), but watching closely, you find a vague recognition in the way her shoulders and arms shiver. Not braced against pain, no; it’s anticipatory. But before you can question your recognition, she breathes out slow and relaxes, sinking back down into the mattress. It kind of puts you in mind of an ice cube melting at top speed, actually.

The escort’s hands move back up to Meirin’s shoulderblades, rubbing quick comforting circles there. Meirin breathes out again, flushed, self-satisfied, and the escort resumes her work.

“Well?” Meirin says, apropos of nothing, and you jump a little as you realize that she’s talking to you. “This doesn’t look so bad, does it?”

“Um, hmm,” you say, and tilt your head in consideration. “I guess not.”

“Don’t feel bad about it,” she goes on. It’s like she’s reading your mind. “I was actually glad I had Saki with me the first time I came here too. It’s kinda scary doing something new on your own.”

In the back of your head you remember: _—Like you’re still a little kid that can’t go to the bathroom on their own._

Meirin, eyes open, watching you, sees you shake your head at yourself.

“It’s fine,” she says. “You can change your mind if you don’t feel up to it, we can just go back to Bel Canto once I’m done if you want.”

“I think I’m still okay,” you tell her. “But thanks.”

She seems to make as if to say something, but then her eyes slide closed. Concentrating on her face, you are taken off guard at first; color rises to her cheeks faintly and then steadily, and her breathing goes deep and syncopated.

You realize where the escort’s hands are at exactly the moment Meirin starts to make noise, and your face goes hot. You can’t look away. The rise and fall of Meirin’s spine is artistic and unhurried; when she raises her voice it’s thin and clear, musical in its lack of shame. When it’s over she sighs, shudders, relaxes; the return of the melted ice cube, if ice cubes are extremely pleased with themselves when they melt. She’d be purring if she were a cat, you bet.

The escort steps back, takes her hands away. You recognize the satisfaction in her expression as the same way you feel after a perfect run-through of a pleasantly challenging piece: Professional pride in a job well done.

It takes Meirin a moment to sit up. Her hair has gotten mussed and she’s still got blotches of high color on her face; she hoists herself off the bed and goes to her pack to pick out clean panties, of all things. You’ve got just enough presence of mind to avert your gaze when she starts to take hers off.

Thankfully the escort is there to distract you with cracking noises as she warms her hands back up. “No surprises for you, right? Why don’t we start with just shoulders and take it from there.”

“I…,” you say, and trail off.

You’re thinking about a lot of things—how weird it is to have a person go straight from giving your friend an orgasm to practical discussion of kneading out your muscles; whether or not it’s weirder that you don’t think you actually mind that much, and if it’s just Meirin’s candid attitude that makes you comfortable with the situation. But mostly you’re caught up with the sudden realization that Meirin’s shivering in anticipation reminds you of Aubrey: You’ve seen them do that plenty, scrutinizing their every small reaction for cues when you’re in bed together.

Your nerves feel alight, like someone’s just poured live lightning into them; all that’s from watching Meirin. You want that, to be touched; the escort is beautiful and kind and, yes, safe, but you don’t want it to be her. There is—even now—only one person that you want to be touched by in a sexual way.

It seems so obvious. So simple, as plain a fact of life as night turning into day, as the seasons changing. And you still weren’t aware until right this minute that you still felt that way about Aubrey at all.

But you do. You do. You think back on wordlessly challenging them to dance, that night before you told them you wanted to take a break, and pleasant chills run all over you: The cold, the electric tingle, the wave of heat after it.

You take a breath.

“Yeah, just shoulders,” you say. “And I want to keep my shirt on, if it won’t get in the way.”

“That’s perfectly fine,” the escort says. “We can do this with you sitting up, too, if you’re more comfortable that way.”

“That would be great,” you say, and close your eyes. Waiting.

 

 

(Meirin leaves a generous tip; so do you.)

 

 

Later, on your way back home:

“See, it’s different, isn’t it?” Meirin says.

You think back to another conversation you had in Polyphony, what seems like a long, long time ago now. “Well… I get that massages _can_ be foreplay, now, obviously. But that’s not what it was for me, today.”

“It’s close enough for you to get what I meant, though, isn’t it?”

You close your eyes. Nod. “You know what, I actually think I kinda do.”

 

 

In addition to being your illustrious ancestor, your hero, and so powerful it’s difficult to wrap your head around, Arietta is a very good listener. There are some things—all right, some _fears,_ that you’re pretty sure only she can understand. Things that you couldn’t ever tell your friends.

So you sit side by side on the glowing crystal steps, and you watch the false stars swirl in the emptiness, diffuse with a light that comes from everywhere and nowhere at all—it’s easier, less scary, than watching her face. But her arm around you is warm and steady.

“How do you figure out how to feel safe again?” you ask at last. “How do you forgive someone for hurting you? I don’t know how to. I’ve never had to.” All you know how to do is hate.

Arietta folds you up against her chest, tucks your head under her chin. Her legs are very long and her elbows are very sharp, and there’s kind of a lot of you to hold, but it’s not uncomfortable.

It was bewildering the first time how solid and real she felt, and some of that shock is still there. You think of it as kind of like a dream—you have to, or you’ll never be able to carry out the World Tuning, because you know you can’t have this forever.

This. This is what safety is. This is what you’ve been starved for your entire life. You try to breathe the sensation in, to hold it in your lungs until it permeates your whole body, hoping to keep even a fragment of it forever.

“You still don’t have to now,” Arietta says. “You can love someone and still be mad at them for doing a bad thing to you. The feelings don’t cancel each other out or anything.”

“Sometimes I wish they did. It’d be easier.”

“Yep,” she says.

You twist around so that you can look up at her. “What did you do? When you wanted to do it but you were scared to. Did you ever feel like that?”

Arietta cocks her head to the side and shrugs. “Sometimes. Less, after Altair and I were together for a while. And then—later on, I mean, it tended to be more… fear that he wouldn’t want to be with me anymore, insecurity. Like, when I got pregnant with Piano, people would say the most _outrageous_ things about him and about me.”

“You beat them up though, right?”

“You bet your bones I did,” and she sounds grimly satisfied when she says it. “I worried how he felt about it, though. So we talked about it a lot.

“The kind of fear you’re talking about, though… being afraid of sex itself. By the time we actually started doing it Altair knew I was messed up about it, so we were careful, but… way back when I was only just considering it? I used to freak out just thinking about it.”

And it makes you feel better to hear her say that.

“How do you deal with it?”

“It’s not easy. You’ve got to be patient with yourself, and your partner’s got to be patient with you; you’ve got to communicate and take it slow and give yourself time. If you don’t think you can do it, you don’t have to force yourself. Your well-being comes first. No matter how sad and sorry Aubrey is for what they did, no matter how badly they’re taking having got exiled to the couch, that doesn’t matter. And furthermore,” says Arietta, brisk, “if they start being a whiny baby about the mess they’ve got themself into, bring them back here and I will punch them on the god damn nose.”

You laugh at that, just like she wanted you to. “Please don’t break my partner’s nose.”

“I can try, but I will make no promises,” she tells you, eyes lidded; you think she’s only about half joking. Maybe you should worry about how that just makes you happy, considering that it’s threats of violence, but: You’ve needed to be loved like this for so long.

You sit in quiet for a while, close your eyes and just enjoy the all-is-right-with-the-world feel of arms around you.

“This is the first time you guys have had a fight, huh,” Arietta says after a couple minutes.

“Yeah,” you say.

“All you’ve really got to do,” she says, “is talk to them when you’re ready. Only when you’re ready—not a day before. If they’re not willing to work with you on this, then, the couch exile can just keep going until they are. It can turn into permanent couch banishment if you want. Breaking up with them’s an option, too, if you two just don’t think it’s working out. Aubrey’s grown up a lot, or at least that’s the impression I get from seeing how they are in your ensemble. I think they’ll listen to you, if they have even a little bit of respect for you as a person. But you don’t owe them anything. Not your body, not your heart.”

“It helps to hear people say that,” you tell her. “I do think that I want to keep trying. Even just thinking about letting someone else touch me like that feels weird and wrong somehow. I’m just—scared. And mad,” you append. “But I do love them. I _do._ Remembering that feels good.”

Arietta tightens her grip on you. “That’s good,” she says.

“Thank you,” you tell her. “I’m glad I had you to talk to. Pretty much everybody’s been really good about this, actually.”

“Well,” Arietta says, for all the world as though it is obvious: “we love you. None of us want you to be uncomfortable and unhappy in your love life.”

You can’t answer that for a while, or you’ll betray how much that simple statement’s made you want to cry.

So you close your eyes instead and breathe. Her hair smells like the white flowers she sometimes wears; you are lulled by the scent, and by the rush of imaginary space around you, by the beating of her heart.


	3. i'll carry it all with love

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>  _(coffee is a form of communication_ – because I already have a magic spell to sweeten it all)

“We… don’t have to do this,” Aubrey says at length. “If you aren’t ready.”

Alto says nothing for a moment, then: “I’m fine. I’m the one who decided to do this. If I change my mind, I’ll say so.”

Another pause, and: “All right,” almost a sigh, like admitting defeat.

It is night; they sit back to back before the fireplace, the door to Alto’s room firmly wedged open. There’s no need to worry about being overheard—the others have promised to give them space—and they both agreed that it would be best not to close themselves in. Aubrey crosses their legs, looks at their tea. Alto holds her coffee cup between both hands and gazes at the fire, resolute.

“I do want to fix this,” she says at length. “I want to find—some good common ground to stand on again, I think? I still want to be with you, like, you’re the only person I want to be in a relationship with or sleep with. But I’m still…” She trails off, and Aubrey’s head cocks to one side as they listen. “Angrier than I first realized I was.”

“That’s… okay,” Aubrey says. “I mean—I mean, you don’t need my permission or anything. It’s just. I know that what I was like towards you wasn’t fair to you. I know it was wrong. And my knowing better, deep down… that makes it even worse.”

“It’s that, but it’s not even just that,” Alto replies. She shrugs. “I don’t think I can explain this too well, but. That it was… impersonal. I think that’s the word I want. That it didn’t have to be me, that anyone would’ve done. It mattered to me, that you loved _me_ and not someone else. But that was just—my own empty hope. It’s frustrating, so I’m mad.”

Aubrey is silent. “Maybe it isn’t a good time to say it, but. I’m glad that you didn’t say this to me back then, when we were going to see Father. I’m sorry that I made you feel like it wasn’t safe to tell me that, and… I’m grateful, that you decided to spare my feelings.”

Alto laughs, with some bitterness. “No, see—I meant what I said back then. Those were my honest feelings at the time? I, hmm. Like I said, it took me a while to figure out that I was actually angry too. I thought I was getting better about that, but _apparently,”_ she spreads her hands with self-disgust and then lets them fall, “I still have a lot of work to do.”

“Oh,” Aubrey says, after a moment, like they don’t know what else to say.

Alto goes on laughing. “You and me are objectively pretty terrible, huh.”

“Maybe just a little bit,” Aubrey concedes to this, and they giggle.

The two of them laugh for a moment, back-to-back, and something in the tense air of the room eases, or nearly.

“It isn’t true,” Aubrey says, after a while. A pause, then: “Or not completely true, anyway.”

Alto half-turns. “What isn’t?”

“That—that I would have been the same way towards anyone,” Aubrey goes on. “The… the reason why I acted so attached to you in the first place… it’s true, that that was because you were the one to wake me, and you were—” they hesitate for just a moment, as if searching for the right word— “available. That was how it was at first. But then you… you stayed at my side when I was anxious. You did everything you could to help me acclimate to how the world had changed. You thought of me, you worried for me, you reassured me… That’s not something that just anyone would have done. I think that’s something you were capable of, and something you chose to do, because you’re you. Because of everything that shaped you, and because of everything you were and are despite it all.

“So when I met you… when you helped me… that’s something that only you could do. It had meaning because it was you. Even if it was just—selfishness on my part, to become infatuated with you… I fell in love with you for real because you’re you.” Aubrey is silent for a while. “I hope that—all of that makes sense.”

“It makes sense,” Alto replies. She rests more of her weight against Aubrey’s back, cranes her head up to gaze absently at the ceiling. “You say some pretty good things sometimes.”

“Even though I’m just me?” Aubrey ventures, with a timid smile; Alto laughs.

“I maybe wouldn’t put it that harshly, but yeah. You and everybody else with your silver tongues, and here I am struggling to put a good sentence together. I’m jealous.”

They sit for a while, in the quiet: Listening to the snap of the fire, the distant ticking of the clock.

“I dunno,” Alto says at last, slumping back down to look at her hands as she half-clenches them on the air. “It meant a lot to me that you needed me. To be needed at all, like, on a personal level and not because I’m a Cantabile. But also that it was you, that it was somebody I like and who treated me well. So if you’re… telling the truth, here, that’s… nice to know. Because knowing you needed me? That helped me probably more than you realize.”

Aubrey takes a breath as if to say something, then lets it out, narrowing their eyes and letting their gaze slide across Alto’s few personal belongings.

“Even with everything,” they say, their expression folding into something between grief and tenderness, “I’m—glad that I helped you.”

There is another long silence. Aubrey lifts their teacup to their lips, briefly; Alto taps on the rim of her coffee cup with a forefinger, frowning pensively into the corner of the room.

“I guess just—how do we fix this,” Alto says at last.

_Is there even anything we CAN fix_ looms heavy in the air, unwanted and unspoken, like smog from one of the industrialized cities of the south.

“I’m not sure,” Aubrey begins, and sets their teacup back in its saucer, pushing the thing across the floor so that they can draw their knees up to their chest, the better to rest their crossed arms over them. “Even if we asked the others for help—”

“Teagan would just be like, _romance is gross what are you looking at me for,_ and Saki and Meirin would get all you-have-to-find-your-own-solution-because-reasons,” Alto interrupts, grinning.

Aubrey giggles. “Exactly.” More wistful: “But it—it must mean something that we want to fix things. That we both… want the same thing.”

“Yeah,” Alto says. “I think it does.” A pause. “Maybe it—I don’t know? Maybe there just isn’t any easy solution. Maybe we have to start again, sort of. Build it all back up better this time. Try to talk about stuff more.”

Aubrey nods. “Maybe.”

They let their left arm rest on the floor beside them, hand swept out; they jolt a little and say _oh,_ very softly, as the side of their hand brushes against Alto’s right.

When they look to the side, Alto has also turned halfway, looking down at where their hands touch with her eyebrows upraised. Aubrey holds their breath, turns their hand palm-up—an offer—and Alto waits a moment then rests hers atop it, like _yeah, okay._ Aubrey breathes out. Alto threads her fingers through theirs and holds on, firm.

Both of them are smiling.

“For the record,” Alto says, “I do still want to sleep with you again. Eventually. But it might be a while until I can do that. Even if we try, I might stop you in the middle, a lot. I want you to be aware of that up front. You _will_ respect that, or we’re going to have a big problem here.”

“Yes,” Aubrey says. “That’s all right. It’s better than—you not telling me ‘no’ even if you want to say it. It would be—a relief to have you say it, thinking of it that way.”

“Good,” Alto says, a vague satisfaction in her voice. “Good.”

“Even if it takes work, and effort,” Aubrey goes on, chin lowered but still peeking up through their hair to meet Alto’s eyes, “I really do believe that—that it will be worth it.”

“Good,” Alto repeats for the third time. The corners of her eyes crinkle, just a little. “Also, are you talking about just our relationship in general, or our sex life, or…?”

_“Alto,”_ Aubrey squeaks, and Alto laughs to see their face flame. Aubrey smiles, only a little strained. “I—both?”

“Oh my _god,_ Aubrey,” Alto says, delighted, and begins to laugh all over again.

“I’m sure we can think of things,” Aubrey goes on, resolute, “to make sure that—that everyone feels safe. At all times.”

“You’re really trying.” Alto grins, crooked. “Maybe one day you’ll even be able to manage to actually _say_ ‘when we’re having sex’ and still look me in the face at the same time.”

“And now you’re making fun of me again,” Aubrey complains, but they’re laughing all the same.

“Well, I mean,” Alto says, shrugging, “it’s kind of hilarious how embarrassed you get? It’s cute? You’re cute.” She tilts her head to the side. “Is this something you mind?”

Aubrey exhales, brief, forceful, rolling their eyes. “I don’t. I don’t even know _why_ I don’t, but no, I don’t.”

“That’s good to know,” Alto remarks, cheerful.

They sit like that, in a more comfortable quiet, both looking at their still-joined hands.

“It’s a work in progress?” Alto says, and it’s more of a question than a firm statement.

“I suppose so,” Aubrey says, “and we just have to… keep working on it.”

“Yeah.” A pause. “Still dating?”

“Yes,” Aubrey replies, pink creeping into their face. “Still dating.”

Neither of them moves in for an embrace, or a kiss, or anything further. But their hold on each other is firm nonetheless.

 

 

(And they announce this the next day, while Meirin is setting breakfast out along the table, Alto blithe and Aubrey avoiding everyone else’s eyes: Hand still firmly in hand.

“Oh good,” Meirin says, beaming at them both. “I _told_ you that all you needed to do was give each other space and then actually talk about it.”

Alto laughs at this, while Aubrey blushes more deeply and makes an indignant sound.

“Isn’t it nice to have life back to normal?” Saki remarks, smiling sidelong towards Teagan, who shrugs.

“I… sure,” she says, all fond disgust. “Such as it is, yes.”)


End file.
